Watching the Sun
by AndAgain
Summary: Fenris finally notices Hawke in all her gory splendor, but in battle you should keep your eye on the enemy. Disobey this rule only at great cost. I bumped the rating to M for gore, just to be on the safe side.
1. Blinded by the Sun

**A/N:** _Just reaaalllly felt like writing more, since I got so many hits on my last story :)_

_There are two halves to this one. If I get a couple of reviews, I'll post the other part!_

_Thanks for reading!_

_-AA_

**DISCLAIMER:**** I OWN NONE OF THE CHARACTERS. I JUST PLAY WITH 'EM.**

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><p><p>

Ellora Hawke span in a tight circle, the metal disks embroidered on her leather armor clicking together in a tinkly battle song.

She leapt into the air, avoiding the swing of a gigantic battleaxe and breaking the jaw of its owner with a steel-toed boot.

This was an image that would stay with Fenris until his dying day.

Hawke, frozen in time. Dressed in a bloodied leather armor-skirt and shimmering silverite breastplate, metal greaves and long boots with metal caps over the toes. A sword was clutched in each of her gloved hands, curved and wider at the ends than the handles with skeletal hand designs carved into the flat of the blades. Both of them were smeared with gore. In fact, every inch of her body up to her chin seemed to be coated in the stuff.

Above her chin, her face was somehow clean. Freckles a faded version of her fiery red hair, which was spread around her head like a flaming halo. Deep, dark green eyes filled with a wild glee, mouth spread in a feral, laughing grin.

She was beautiful.

A goddess.

She took his breath away, caught in the air, stopped in this action-pose, bent into an acrobatic shape taught with purpose and exhilaration. One foot in the face of a slaver.

Defending herself, so that she could defend all of them.

So she could defend him.

This picture of her plastered itself inside his head, on his mind, blinded him as it burned itself behind his eyes.

He blinked.

The world resumed, she came down from the man's face and stabbed him in the back with fluid grace.

Fenris turned back to his own attacker, a tall Tevinter slaver with two wicked longswords and a crazed look in his eye. The elf raised his own weapon, a greatsword that looked suspiciously like a gigantic butcher knife.

It slid from his hands.

His fingers had gone slack. His arms fell to his sides.

Confused, Fenris looked down at his body.

The hilt of one of the slaver's longswords protruded from a chink in the armor covering the elf's belly.

Something thick and red, laced with tendrils of something that glowed silver-blue, was leaking from beneath the weapon.

It took a second for him to understand what was happening, and it wasn't until his brain, working in slow-motion, had come to the conclusion that he'd been stabbed that the pain came.

It hit him hard, shattering the world. The grin of his attacker split into a thousand pieces. The sun turned gray and the sky exploded into stars. Everything tilted and swayed.

Someone was screaming his name.

Something hot and wet was falling in a steady stream on his face. Someone asked him what he was doing, why he hadn't been paying attention.

Begged him for the answer.

Pleaded with him.

He forced the answer out through numb lips, out around the throbbing fire spreading from his belly into every inch of the rest of his body.

"I... I was..." he rasped, trying his hardest to get his tongue to obey him. The voice sobbed its desperate need for his answer, and as his fractured vision faded to black, he managed to reply.

"I was watching the sun."


	2. The Sun's Lament

**A/N: **Soooo sorry that this is late! Things happen in real life :T Would that I could just go live in DA! Oh, well, I'll survive. Thank you all bunches for the great feedback! :D It totally makes my day.

-AA

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><p><strong>Disclaimer:<strong>** I OWN NOTHING AT ALL! BIOWARE OWNS THE CHARACTERS, I JUST LOVE THEM!**

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><p>Hawke saw it coming.<p>

She decapitated a slaver with a twitch of her blades and then turned to help Fenris with his.

She'd turned too late.

Time slowed down, and Hawke felt like she was moving through molasses. Her leg muscles churned and she ran flat out, her short, carrot-orange hair streaming out behind her.

He blinked at her. Once. Those huge, beautiful eyes blinked at her. Emeralds, dazzling in the sun.

He seemed confused, his mouth partially open, his eyebrows scrunched together. He blinked again.

The blade sank into his belly with a sound like ripping paper.

That chink in his armor.

She'd meant to remind him before the fight.

Any of their party could have fixed it.

She could have fixed it.

_I should have. I should have reminded him. Should have fixed it. He'd be safe. Please be safe, Fenris. _

_Please?_

Fenris looked down at the knife in his belly. Then back to her. He blinked.

She was still running. Screaming. Screaming his name.

Something was wrong with his eyes.

The slaver, grinning maniacly, jerked the blade from his flesh, and a fountain of blood followed it.

Hawke saw the elf blink.

Third blink.

A surprised blink.

His eyes went dark. He let out a strange noise that she was just close enough to hear.

Something like, "Oof."

And then he fell. Slumped forward onto his knees, then tumbled back. Hit the ground with a metallic _clank._

Hawke reached him then. She ran his attacker through, then turned and knelt beside him. She dropped her weapons at her sides, pulled off her gloves and moved his white hair from his face. His eyes were open unnaturally wide, and their vivid green had darkened and clouded over into something brooding and vacant, as though he were staring at something just behind her. Something he didn't like.

She forced herself to look away from his face, and to the wound.

Isabella and Varric were still occupied by the fighting, trying to keep them off her back. Hawke could hear the dwarf whispering urgently to Bianca, encouraging her to fight faster, to hit harder. Isabella was uncharacteristically silent, efficiently cutting her way through foes with a hard expression on her face.

Hawke began desperately to try to undo the straps that kept Fenris's breastplate in place, cursing every time her shaking fingers slipped on the buckles.

When she'd got that off, she flung it away with far more vehemence than necessary. She watched it sail across the field until it beaned one of the slavers on the head, denting his helmet and causing him to collapse in a jumbled heap.

Satisfied, Hawke looked back at the wound, and hissed in surprise.

It was already soaking his tunic, turning the dark brown fabric black in a flowering stain. Blood flowed freely, like a spring, from the ragged hole in his belly. It was laced with glowing tendrils of lyrium. She could see his chest heaving, barely, and the skin around the wound seemed to beat like a heart. Fenris's mouth was open slightly, a ragged, rasping noise indicating his attempts at getting air. She thought she could see some organ through the bleeding, and it looked punctured.

She tore a strip of red cloth from her own tunic, balled it up and jammed it in the hole. The flow of blood and lyrium stopped for a moment, but when it had soaked through the fabric it resumed full force. Hawke pulled off her boots and greaves and removed her battle-skirt, then began tearing more of her tunic until it only reached mid-thigh. She used the strips to bind the wound as best she could.

When she was done, and it continued to contribute to the growing pool of blood around the elf, Hawke broke down and cried. He was still breathing, but so shallowly that she had to hold her ear over his lips to detect it. Her tears, hot and salty, splashed onto his face.

It made it look like he was crying, too.

He looked so much less intimidating, so vulnerable, without most of his armor or his constantly guarded expression. The light in his eyes, so dim since the knife first broke through his flesh, was fading faster and faster.

"Please." Hawke whispered, barely even realizing it was she who spoke. "Please – please don't –" she broke off in a sob. She tried to beg, to plead with him. She grew louder and louder, until she was screaming, demanding to know why he was leaving, why he was giving up. Giving up on everything he had worked for, had run and escaped for. Giving up on freedom and a home and a place to belong to.

Giving up on her.

Why hadn't he payed better attention? Why didn't he notice? Where was his head, his mind, his training? What made this happen? Why was he leaving?

Why?

She needed the knowledge like she needed air and sunlight. She couldn't breathe, couldn't see. She was screaming, louder than before, shouting, shaking him. He was coughing weakly, coughing blood, his eyes had shut and he was coughing.

She demanded the knowledge at first, but when he was not forthcoming, Hawke began to beg. She shook him harder, shouted louder and louder. She felt a strong, square hand on her shoulder, trying to pull her away from him.

Heard Isabella's voice from somewhere a long way off, shrieking, "You're hurting him!"

But how could she hurt him, when he was already dying?

No, she wouldn't let him leave. Not without the truth. The 'why'.

"Please, I have to know!"

He heaved a gigantic breath.

"I... I was..." his sputtering voice cut through the fog in her mind like a ray of light in the dark. She blinked and stopped shaking him, laying him down gently on her lap, watching his eyes focus slightly and flare with a short burst of their former light. She saw him struggling around the blood in his mouth, trying to speak.

She begged him, sobbing more quietly now, for the answer.

Another huge intake of air.

"I was watching the sun."

The brightness left his eyes entirely, and his eyelids dropped shut. His breathing dropping back to near nil. Hawke looked up from the elf in her arms, from his gently sloping brow and silvery hair and the knowledge of the lightless green eyes underneath their lids.

No one was around them; the battlefield was littered with bodies, but silent other than her own crying, which was much gentler now.

Varric and Isabella were nowhere in sight, and Hawke figured they'd gone for help.

_Too late, _she thought, _we're all too late._

Hawke propped him up in her arms. The wound wasn't bleeding so much now, not that it mattered.

_Too late._

She rocked back and forth gently until the last of his breath faded away.


	3. As The Sun Sleeps

**A/N: **_okay, so, this took a while to put up, chiefly because there was some major DRAMA with my stupid router. Damn you, AT&T. Internet was sketchy for a day or so after I put up the 2__nd__ chapter, and then cut out altogether until today – we got a new router. Not that it matters. We're getting U-Verse later this week. Just couldn't live without the internet for any longer, though. _

_Aaaanyway, here's this chapter, and the last (?)* one, because I have both for you and I want to be nice :)_

_-AA_

*I'm not totally sure, but I'm considering fleshing this out into a real story. Continuing it beyond this event. What do you think?

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><p><strong>DISCLAIMER: <strong>_The nouns are Bioware's, the adjectives are mine._

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><p>He stumbled over rocks and bodies and fallen weapons to the huddled mass at the far side of the battlefield. Toward the flaming red hair, fluttering in the breeze, toward the frightening stillness of both his form and hers. She seemed to be stirring, barely. He ran faster.<p>

By the time that he got there, She was passed out, too.

On top of the elf's body.

Anders didn't find the image particularly appealing.

Isabella and Varric had burst into his clinic, covered in sweat and blood, gasping for air and sputtering something that had initially been unintelligible.

Eventually, the pirate had managed something to the effect of,

"H-Hawke – Fenris – stabbed – blood everywhere – elf not... not breathing. Hawke's hysterical."

He'd left before she finished her broken tale, robes flaring out behind himself as he dug a traveling spell out of his memory. Alainka had found it for him, in a book of magic they'd come across in their travels. Alainka, the Hero of Ferelden.

She'd come to him broken, beaten down by a year of struggle and loss, by the flame of a romance that had guttered and died in the cold breeze of duty and racism. He'd done his level best to heal her, to fill her up again, but she was so empty that he'd not have been able to manage it on his own. In the end, it was only possible with the help of Howe, Sigrun, Ogren, Justice and the others.

As though the recollection of the spell had unstoppered a bottle of Orlesian champagne, memories frothed through his consciousness, a creamy sea of better times that lapped on the shores of the bleak present.

Anders cast the spell, and felt himself flow out of time and space and physical being, melding with the real world and the fade, somewhere in between but also in both places. His mind became slippery and hard to focus, and he was unable to stem the tide of thoughts and feelings that came with the Warden's name.

_A shriek from the room next to his, and he was out of bed in an instant. Never a deep sleeper, Anders was liable to be up at the slightest noise, let alone the loud cry that had emitted from his neighbor. He hesitated at the door, but another shout laid waste to his reservations. _

_The blond mage gently entered his commander's suite, taking in the sparse furnishings, the dusty carpet, the cobwebs in the corners and the packed satchels lying haphazardly across the floor._

It's like she's not even really living here, _he thought to himself as he walked around the corner into her bedroom. The sight he was met with was shocking, to say the least._

_She was small, slight, tiny even for an elf. She had curled up in a tight ball, tangled in the blue comforter. She looked as though she was drowning in the overlarge bed, with its ornate posts and silver canopy. The opulence of the room was absurd: high-backed chairs surrounded a small card table carved with ferocious looking griffons for legs. A vanity, again absurdly ostentatious, stood against the left wall, and the deep color of its wood clashed against the vibrant paisley wallpaper._

_The overall effect was garish, and Anders felt like he was wading through an Orlesian whorehouse as he fought against the sickly-sweet scent of disuse to get to the warden._

_When he had finally made it, it took another twenty minutes to wake her up all the way. After that, an hour to calm her down, and then a sleeping spell (per her request) to get her through the rest of the night._

_It was not the first time he was to be in her rooms at four o'clock in the morning._

_A few months after that incident, in fact, Anders had woken again to the shrieks of his leader. This time, however, she had been specifically calling his na – _

**'How exactly is pining after the Warden furthering the cause? You burned that bridge. Stop wallowing and get to Hawke.' **Justice's voice cut through the mage's mind like a knife, snapping him back to reality as they materialized somewhere along the wounded coast, and the ex-warden was forced to acknowledge the fade-spirit's presence, no matter how unclean it felt. No matter how wrong.

_I am an abomination. _

_Alainka will never forgive me for letting her be abandoned twice. _

_Karl is dead. _

_This is my life, now. Here, in Kirkwall, with Hawke._

_With Justice._

"I – I'm sorry. I'm finding her, now. You're right, I shouldn't dwell on the past." he answered aloud, beginning to pick his way as fast as possible towards the site of the battle, hating the subservient tone in his own voice.

Anders stepped over the twisted, stinking bodies of slavers. He slipped in pools of blood, nearly landing on his rear end more times than he could count. Occasionally, he would step in something warm and mushy near a particularly mangled corpse, but he never looked down to find out what it was.

_Don't want to know._

Eventually, he reached Hawke and Fenris.

She was bent around his body like she wanted to shield him from further harm. Her arms were covered in blood up to the elbows, and more was smeared across her legs and what Anders could see of her neck. Pieces of her armor were strewn around her person, cast aside as though they were worthless. The mage lightly brushed her exposed arm with his fingertips, noting her clammy skin, the way she shivered in her sleep, the shredded hem of her tunic. She'd tried to save the elf, and might killed herself in the process, had Anders gotten there any later.

He sighed, shrugging off his own thick wool cloak and covering her with it as snow began to fall gently, purifying the battlefield as the white flakes concealed the carnage.

Anders smiled ruefully to himself, loving the irony.

He set down his pack and squatted by the two warriors, gently prying Hawke off of the elf. When he'd managed to extract Fenris, he set the ex-slave to the side on an old bedroll and began to make camp.

He set up a large tent with one plush bedroll to the left, and a simpler one to the right. He extracted several blankets from his pack and created a sort of nest on the nicer sleeping place, into which he gently laid Hawke after removing the rest of her armor. He was quick, efficient. His hands moved with the deft precision of an experienced healer, making up a fire in the increasing cold, setting the logs aflame with magic when flint wouldn't work. He boiled water quickly, again using a spell, and left several bandages in the pot while he healed Hawke's worst injuries with less conventional means.

He drew upon his power, knowing exactly when to stop, when to push her body to heal itself in stead of doing all the work alone. Anders was keenly aware that even the best healers had only so much energy to put into a patient, and when he neared the end of his own supply, he dressed her minor cuts and bruises with poultices of Elfroot.

When Hawke finally stopped shivering, he used a warm rag to wipe the worst of the gore from her skin, then left her bundled in blankets to sleep. It was the darkest part of the night, and Anders was exhausted from the healing, but he went out of the tent to clean the body of the elf, so that Hawke wouldn't be too distraught when she saw it in the morning.

**'Why bother making up this mage-hater's corpse? Better to let him rot, or be eaten by vermin.'**

Anders shook his head, trying to clear it of Justice's influence.

"Everyone deserves a proper burial, Justice." he snapped aloud, stepping out into the cool air, his boots crunching in the new snow as he made his way to the elf's body, "Fenris is – er, was – a brave warrior, and a champion of freedom, if not that of mages in specific. We may have disagreed on the particulars, but the goal was similar."

Anders could hear Justice's mental snort of derision, but he ignored the fade spirit and bent over the corpse. "Dog you may have been, Fenris," he muttered, bending to inspect the elf, "but you were Hawke's dog, and I think well enough of her to believe that you must have been possessed of some worth."

The mage turned to look at the campsite over his shoulder, at the long shadows cast by the cheerful fire, and was pleased to hear what sounded like a snore come from the tent. He grabbed the damp rag from his pocket, and began to wipe Fenris's torso clean, removing the blood-soaked bandages and even tidying the dark, ragged hole in his belly. The elf was cold to the touch, and his lyrium tattoos had ceased to glow.

Anders put his hand over Fenris's prone form, using some of his sorely depleted energy to try to force a thin layer of grayish skin to grow over the terrible wound, erasing a little of the grotesqueness of the corpse. He poured a tiny bit of magic into the hole, tugging at the few remaining live cells, pushing them to heal themselves.

Even further tired by the expenditure of his mana, the mage tried to lean back on his haunches.

He couldn't.

He was frozen. Something was pulling his energy from him; the connection he'd opened between his own life force and Fenris's body wouldn't shut. He couldn't pull himself away, or move, or speak. He was being drained of everything.

Panic pumped adrenaline through his veins, but Anders still couldn't jerk himself away from the elf.

_I'm going to die, _he thought, _I'm going to die, right here, in the cold and the dark, alone, unfulfilled. None of this will have been worth anything. My whole life, fighting to save mages, only to die pouring myself into one who would have us chained. _

He stared, unblinking, unmoving, at Fenris, until he felt himself starting to fade. His body slumped forward, his vision became fuzzy, and the connection finally broke off.

It took him a few minutes, but Anders was eventually able to get up from the ground, albeit shakily. Justice seemed to have gone quiet, sort of dormant, as though he, too, were utterly spent.

The mage stood over the elf's body, breathing in sputtering gasps. The frigid air hurt his lungs, but he was grateful for it. _I'm not dead, _he thought, _I have no idea what in Thedas just happened, but I'm not dead._

He shut his eyes for a moment, trying to slow his breathing, to calm down. He opened them again, and then wished he hadn't.


	4. Solar Flare

**A/N: **_Okay, here is the conclusion (should I pull it into a full blown story?) of Watching The Sun _:D

-AA

**DISCLAIMER: **_These be Bioware's nouns, and my adjectives._

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><p>It wasn't the shout or the horrible, grinding, cracking noise or the thunderous <em>BOOM <em>that shuddered through the earth beneath her that woke Hawke. It was the fact that everything was suddenly as light as though it were day.

She opened her eyes just a little, and was blinded immediately by a harsh blue-white light. She shut them again, and sat up, fighting against nausea and the bone-deep ache that seemed to have settled into every inch of her body. She stood, swaying slightly, reaching her hands out to steady herself, taking in the strange lightness that meant she wasn't wearing any armor. She felt around blindly, finding the edges of the tent around her and shuffling her bare feet forward until she came upon the opening.

She pushed her way through, and couldn't help gasping at the cold that met her outside the warmth of the tent. He feet went numb in what felt like snow, and she stumbled forward, catching herself with one hand on what felt like a spit. Over a fire. A very hot spit. She shrieked and let the metal go, hopping away from the flames, pressing the burnt had into the snow on the ground.

_Alright, I'm done with this blind nonsense. Light or no light, I'm opening my eyes._

She forced her eyelids up, and blinked until her vision cleared. She was still on the battlefield, but it had been transformed by glittering flurries of pure, new snow. Behind her, there was a large tent, and to her left was a dancing fire. Everything was lit with a strange, impossibly bright light that eliminated shadows entirely. She turned, trying to find its source, and was met with a face-full of fur and plaid cloth, with some blonde hair thrown into the mix.

"Anders!" Hawke shouted in surprise, before she landed in a snowdrift with the mage on top of her. "Wh-What in the name of Andraste are you – mmf!" he'd covered her mouth with one big, soft hand.

"Be quiet, Ellora!" He hissed into her ear, his warm breath tickling against her neck, "I have no idea what he'll do when he wakes up." He sounded strained, frustrated or frightened, she couldn't tell which. They lay there for a moment, the snow soaking through the back of her tunic, his breath warming her neck, until she decided she was too curious and too cold and felt too awkward to allow the situation to continue.

She bit his hand.

"Ow! What was that for?" he let her go, jerking back, and she pushed past him, leaving the mage blinking confusedly in the snowdrift.

She ran towards the source of the light: a gigantic blue-white pillar that seemed to shimmer and writhe with strange, twisting vines that looked strange and ethereal. Hawke made it to the edge of the pillar, and had to shield her eyes for a moment while they adjusted again. Anders shouted at her not to touch the light, to back up and close her eyes, but Hawke knelt in the snow and tried to see into the center of the strange phenomenon.

The longer she looked at it, the more details she noticed. Glowing cracks in the earth spiderweb-ed along the ground around the light, and the clouds it touched far above were veined with blue. There was a deep, resonant humming noise that came from it, and the wind it stirred up blew her hair back from her face.

As she squinted, she began to notice the outline of a being in the light, one that seemed to stand rigid as though in pain. She began to pick out a leg, an arm, the tip of a pointed ear.

Hawke screwed up her eyes, trying to see through the blinding light, trying desperately to identify the person. It seemed to be made of the same ghostly mist as the vines, almost fluid. She saw long fingers, bare feet, could tell that it was tall. That it had pale hair that fluttered gently, like feathers.

"Who are you?" she breathed, standing reaching a hand tentatively towards the light. The creature stirred slightly, turning towards her with elven grace. Its eyes were shut, and its lips were parted slightly. The broad shoulders, and the flat expanse of its torso led her to decide its gender. A man. There was an elven man in the light. The silvery blue-white light.

The lyrium-colored light.

Hawke drew a sharp breath, eyes widening, heart beating like a drum in her stomach, in her chest, in her throat.

"Fenris?" she said, in a clear voice full of wonder and confusion.

The elven man opened his huge, glittering green eyes.

She felt the wind die down, the humming quiet slightly, the cracks in the earth had stopped spreading and Anders had gone silent. She felt herself lurch forward, felt gentle warmth envelope her body as she stepped into the light. Felt the strange smoothness of Fenris's skin, saw him waver as though he weren't entirely real, saw that he was without markings or scars entirely.

He gazed at her as though she were completely alien to him, with the eyes of a child. She touched his face. He opened his mouth, a strange over-brightness flickering in his eyes. He reached out one hand and brushed a strand of orange hair from her cheek.

"Hawke?"

They stood there for a second, a second of peace and tranquility and _wholeness. _Entirely healed.

Then, with a resounding _crack_, the light fractured, and she was thrown from it into the cold snow.

Anders was shouting again, but she couldn't hear him over Fenris's screaming. The light seemed to be being pulled into him piece by piece, leaving long, jagged spires extended into the sky. Hawke watched, appalled, as vines of lyrium-light crawled up Fenris's body, carving themselves into the familiar brands on his skin. He arched his back in pain, eye wide and glowing blue, and Hawke forced herself up from the ground.

She fought her way through the waves of power that emanated from the elf, pushed herself closer and closer until she could reach him, as the last of his brands dragged themselves up his throat, onto his chin, and then went dark.

The light stopped, the sound stopped, the wind stopped. He fell, but she caught him.

He was frozen, shaking, naked, skin still occasionally shocking her with magic, but he was alive. She held him, in the dark and the cold, with snow gathering on their hair and shoulders. His body was wracked with silent sobs, but her eyes were dry.

"Thank the Maker." she managed in a hoarse whisper, "You're safe."

Then she cried.


End file.
